Archive for the ‘Just My Life’ Category

So I finally got some more done on the playroom today. All of the support boards for the floor joists are up and I put in the floor joists in front of the door so that Candace can get to the laundry room a little easier. Hopefully I will have all of the floor joists up before next weekend so that I can start insulating the floor.

So after mostly avoiding my garage all week, I finally got some more work done on it today. My Father-In-Law Ron came over and gave me a hand with framing in the two mud room walls. One is all the way framed in, the other we built up to the level of the floor and I will finish framing it in when I decide where I want the door. In the mean time, I scribed the level that the floor will be at on all the studs around the room so that I can start hanging the floor joists. Hopefully I can pick up the materials tomorrow afternoon and work on it over the course of the week so that I can insulate the floor next weekend and put down the sub-flooring. We are donating the fridge to the food kitchen that our church sponsors. I can’t take any more time trying to sell it, I just need to get it out of my way. So the project is moving along, slower than I hoped but quicker than I expected.

The first job was to clean out the garage and pull down some of the loft style shelves that were hanging from the ceiling. You can see that it is pretty much done in the first two pictures, except for the shelves over the refrigerator. I also had to pull a couple of peg boards off the walls, you can see those still up on either side of the garage door. There were also a ton of random nails in the studs that I had to pull out.

Garage door before starting.

Laundry room before starting.

The next job was getting the garage door out. Ron, my father-in-law came over and gave me a hand with that. Anyone else ever taken a garage door off? It’s not easy! I had put it up for sale on craigslist for $55, which was most likely WAY too little since I was including the door and the lift for it, but it will help with the cost of the project (it’s $55 more than I thought I would have.) It sold the day I posted it and the guy picked it up about an hour after Ron and I got it dismounted. Taking the springs off correctly was the trickiest part and by the grace of God neither of us was hurt when we took the first one off wrong and it went flying. There was also a brand new coleman camping stove in the garage when we bought the house. I sold that on craigslist for another $50, and we have a the fridge that you can see in the pictures, that will no longer fit in the garage, which I hope to get at least $50 for.

So with the door gone I needed to close up the opening. I wanted it to look consistent with the rest of the structure, so I went back to my Teen Missions Training and laid a row of block. I dry fit it first. I figured I would need to cut at least one block. The tricky part here was the temperature. You can’t let concrete or mortar freeze for at least a couple days and Alabama was just starting out on an unusually long cold spell. It was a whole week and a bit of highs in the low 30’s – low 40’s and lows well below freezing, so I closed the opening with a tarp and cranked up the wood stove in the kitchen and put a fan at the door to blow the hot air into the garage. I later put plywood up on the outside of the tarp to help keep more heat in and thieves and curious neighbors out. In addition to mortar, I also poured concrete in the blocks to help give them strength and to hold threaded bar that I used to tie in a 2×8 to attach the stud wall to. I let the concrete and mortar cure for 5 days before putting up the stud wall.

Dry fitting the blocks.

Block laid.

While I was waiting for the concrete to set up I started working on the other end of the room. We are raising the floor in the garage 18 inches to get it level with the rest of the house. The problem with that was that I didn’t want to raise the laundry room floor because that would add plumbing costs to raise the washer and hot water heater. Plus, the hot water heater uses natural gas and I was not going to mess with those pipes. I also didn’t want to have to raise the side entry door that you can see to the left of the picture below. My solution was to move the laundry room entrance to the left and frame in a little sunken mud room in that corner. So as you can see, I framed in the old entrance and tore out a new one, which I have yet to frame in properly. I also still have to frame in the two stud walls for the mud room, one of which will need a doorway. You can also see in the picture below that I took out the shelving that was near the door to the kitchen.

Laundry room door framed in and new door opening started.

The last thing that I have finished is framing in and closing up the old garage door opening. We will be putting a window in that wall, so I framed it to fit the window, but left it covered with plywood until I’m ready to install the windows. We got the windows from Candace’s uncle Mark and he said that he would come over and help me install them. Hopefully I will be ready for that soon. I’m not too sure how strong my stud walls are, but thankfully only one of them will be bearing the weight of the floor and that will only be a little of the weight as it will be on one side of the short hallway created by the mud room. Look for another update in a week or two.

They say when you start something that you should always expect it to take twice as long as you plan and cost twice as much. So my first project of the new year is a home renovation. With a new baby on the way we need a little more room. Candace said that either we move or we turn the garage into a playroom/office. She said playroom, I added office. So assuming my first statement was correct, this should cost about $1600 and take me a little over two months to complete. Since the first of the year we have cleaned out the garage, ripped almost everything off of the walls and ceiling and removed the garage door. I have the next two days off and hope to make a good start on closing in where the garage door was, and putting up a couple of other walls. Once that is done, we are raising the floor by 18 inches. Should go pretty quickly once that is done. Pictures to follow as the project progresses.